NFC vs. iBeacon

I love NFC and I'd much rather Apple embrace NFC and other industry standards.

I'm just showing you Apple's point of view.

A few clarifications:

1. NFC doesn't actually have that much bandwidth. It's mostly used for very small data transfers. In the case of something like Samsung's S-Beam, NFC is just used to do the pairing; the actual data transfer takes place over Bluetooth HS / Wi-Fi Direct.

2. NFC isn't much easier. AirPlay and AirDrop are almost as easy as NFC for pairing devices to stream media or transfer files. For payments, have you tried Google Wallet? There's plenty of set-up. Apple could make that much, much easier with everything they have in place now.

3. Yes Android phones will have their own Bluetooth LE Beacons, but you can bet that Apple's iBeacon system will not interoperate with Android, just as AirDrop and AirPlay do not.

4. One downside of NFC is the large antenna usually required for it. It does have a cost in size and weight. It may be minimal to some, but certainly Apple wastes no space inside the iPhone case, and tries to make it as thin as possible. I would not be surprised if they excluded NFC for space reasons.